


And my ship is so small

by Tesserae



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, M/M, Season 7 Spoilers, s7e10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:33:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tesserae/pseuds/Tesserae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fact that it's nearly Christmas has somehow escaped Sam this year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And my ship is so small

**Author's Note:**

  * For [killabeez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killabeez/gifts), [De_Nugis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/gifts).



> **Contains major spoilers for 7.10.**
> 
>  
> 
> For Killa, from her prompt _I would deeply love to read about Sam and Dean's Christmas this year._ Epilogue written for de_nugis, from her prompt _From her prompt, Sam/Dean. It's the first New Year's Eve after the world ends. At least, they think so. They may have lost track._

They salt and burn Bobby on the night of the Solstice. It’s a clear cold night, the previous day’s snowfall heavy on the dark limbs of the trees and the sky awash in stars above their heads. They travois the body far enough into the woods that no one will see the flames and call the Forest Service, or Smoky the Bear, or whoever the hell it is that watches out for random acts of desecration on Federal property – they’re halfway to Yellowstone, but looking at the tall pines, Sam’s not entirely sure that Bobby hadn’t made some kind of mark on this land, back in his traveling days.

He’d suggested to Dean in the morning that they should’ve stuck with Plan A, cleared whatever was salvageable out of the house and torched the place with Bobby inside it, maybe propped up behind what remained of his desk. But Dean had given him a weird look and said, “Hell no, Sam, what the fuck?” and so they’d gotten into the car and driven toward the deepest woods they could find. And it’s a measure of just how fucking strangest the last week has been that Sam’s not entirely sure what part of this is the strangest, the fact that they’d managed to hold it together tightly enough to claim Bobby’s body from the morgue, get it to freaking _Montana_ and haul it through landscape that looks like an old-fashioned Christmas card, or the fact that Lucifer’s been riding shotgun since they parked the car.

“And what’s that line, something about the woods being dark and deep? They’re not really dark, Sammy,” Lucifer says just then. Sam has to admit he’s right, not with the moonlight reflecting off the snow on the ground, although if Sam looks further back into the trees, _deep_ is a pretty good description. He shakes his head, shifting the pole in his hand so it presses into the raised scar tissue on his palm, and Lucifer laughs and falls silent.

The woods are quiet, too, the only sound the harsh uneven drag of the travois. It’s a small point of contact, just the tips of the two poles on the trail, but somehow it buries the crunch of their boots and the rush of the wind whipping Sam’s hair into his eyes and even the rasp of Dean’s breathing, half a foot away from Sam’s left shoulder.

It’s not quite big enough to drown out the faint chuckle Lucifer lets out from time to time from his perch on Bobby’s chest, but Sam’s used to that now too. He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t answer, just tightens his grip on the pole and matches his breathing to Dean’s, and walks on into the woods.

*

Afterwards, Dean hustles them back to the car without waiting for sunrise. “This look like Stonehenge to you, Sam?” he asks. “Scratch that, do I look like a fucking Druid?”

He’s got a point. Sam frowns and looks at his brother in the anemic glow of the car’s dome light. Dean looks – Dean looks like _hell_ , Sam realizes, eyes red and ringed with shadows, his hair plastered to his skull and more than a couple days’ growth of beard blurring the clean line of his jaw. Sam probably looks like shit, too, because although he’d shaved before they claimed the body he’s been running on Red Bull ever since – he can’t remember when they last got a decent night’s sleep or ate something that wasn’t wrapped in plastic.

From his spot in the rearview mirror Lucifer nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Dean hitches a shoulder irritably and Sam tears his eyes away from Lucifer’s smirk. “We should get out of here, get back to the motel and get cleaned up.” They both smell like smoke and kerosene and other things Sam doesn’t want to think about. He rolls the window down and sticks his head out as Dean starts the car. Mercifully, Dean lets him have first crack at the shower when they get back to the motel. Sam’s pretty sure Dean feels even filthier than he does, since Sam’s used to the smell of flames lurking in his clothing, but right now he’s just relieved, and not in the mood to argue.

He’s not in the mood to argue either when Dean shoulders his way into the shower and fits his mouth to Sam’s. He tastes like tears and whiskey, and his lips tremble under Sam’s, and all Sam can do is wrap his arms around his brother’s broad shoulders and hold on, while the water pours down over them and washes the last of the smoke from their skin.

*

The next day they’re back in Sioux Falls to clear out Bobby’s house. Thirty six hours, one miserable ice-laden blizzard and two cases of beer later, they’ve got most of what survived the fire sorted into boxes. Dean’s let Sam do most of the sorting, burning off the energy vibrating through him by hauling piles of books and papers and _gear_ into the kitchen, the least damaged room in the house, for Sam to look through. Once Sam’s filled a few boxes, he hauls them out to the car and back to the motel, stopping at one or another of the local liquor stores to grab more.

“They all knew Bobby,” he explains after the third of these runs. “They’re happy to help. ‘Course, I think Bobby’s responsible for most of these boxes.”

Sam picks up a box that's stenciled with the word WHISKEY in black letters. "He owned stock in Hunter’s Helper?" he asks, and Dean huffs a laugh.

“More like The Liquor Store Clerk Full Employment Program.” He holds up a bag and Sam can hear the clink of bottles. “There’s more of these in the trunk. Apparently Bobby got a gift card for his birthday this year.”

Early in the afternoon on the second day, Dean takes off on another box run, leaving Sam staring in some bemusement at a pile of novels with brightly-colored covers. When the phone rings, startling him, it’s Sheriff Jody Mills with an invitation to Christmas Eve dinner.

“You boys gotta eat,” she says. “Seriously, nothing fancy, just a turkey from the deli counter and a couple pounds of mashed potatoes, maybe a jar of gravy…” Her voice trails off, as if she’s rethinking the idea of inviting her late – what was Bobby, anyway? Sam categorically rejects the idea of calling him her _boyfriend_ , which leaves him with _friend_ and that doesn’t seem quite – “Sam?” she says, and it’s obviously a question, so he tries to answer it.

“I – ah, Sheriff Mills, we’re not really –“

“You’re not trying to stay at Bobby’s, are you?” She sounds alarmed, as if the possibility had just occurred to her.

“No, no. We’re trying to salvage what we can from the library – you know Bobby had a lot of, um, first editions? – before the city tears the place down.” He looks down at the soot-grimed coveralls he’s wearing and grimaces. “The place is a wreck, Sheriff. We’re at a motel a couple miles down the road.”

“Mavis’s place?”

“Yeah.” He can’t think of anything else to say – Mavis’s place was a motel, motels had walls and a roof and bathrooms and beds, and that was pretty much all there was to say, because he can’t quite find the words to tell her what digging through Bobby’s fire-damaged house is doing to his concentration – so he presses the phone to his ear and listens to her breathe.

Finally, the silence on his end must get to her, because she makes a rustling noise and clears her throat. “So, okay, Sam, you boys change your mind you know where I live. You want to eat with me, come by tomorrow around 6pm.”

“Tomorrow?” he asks, startled. “You said –“

“Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, Sam,” she says. Her voice is gentle and a little gruff, and it makes him swallow against the tightness in his throat. Christmas Eve, holy shit.

“Okay, Sheriff. I’ll ask Dean, and if he wants to we’ll call you first.” He presses the button to break the connection and slips his phone back into his pocket. Where the hell is Dean, anyways? Box run my ass, Sam thinks, not surprised that Dean keeps finding reasons to escape from the house. Sam’s got more patience, and the books were always more his thing, anyways, his and Bobby’s. So far, he’s uncovered a couple of gems - and way more Dick Francis and Janet Evanovich than he would have predicted.

Mostly, though, it’s a foul mess, greasy and stinking of brimstone, and Sam is sick to death of the taste of ash in his throat. He’d made Dean rent them a second room after walking back into theirs the previous night to find Lucifer perched on top of the stack of boxes. Dean had agreed without arguing, for once. Once this whole thing is over, he wants to head back out to California, spend about a week in the cold surf south of San Francisco. He’s not sure that getting clean will banish Lucifer, but at least he won’t smell like the devil’s hands have been braiding his hair while he sleeps.

And _ugh_ , there’s an image Sam doesn’t need in his brain ever again. He shudders, a full-body spasm that forces bile into his throat, and swallowing it down, lurches for the door. Outside, he climbs out of his paper carapace and heads for the road. It’s cold. The sun is starting to drop into the west and the wind is still laden with ice crystals and whistling sideways around and through the cars.

Sam brushes hard little flakes out of his eyes and looks around at the yard, at the snow drifting pristine white against the ripped and torn piles of metal.

Holy shit, how are they going to deal with the _yard_?

Maybe he needs to get back into the house, deal with what he can while his mind’s still marginally functional. But then, barely audible over the wind, there’s the sound of an engine and past it, the ghost of a laugh, and he just keeps walking, one foot after the other, pressing his thumb into the palm of his left hand.

He doesn’t stop until the engine is a multi-decibeled monster and a rush of glossy black swerves across his path. It stops and its door swings open toward him. He blinks and backs up warily, but when Journey and the smell of French fries spill out, he grins and steps closer.

The last time Lucifer wore his brother’s face, there hadn’t been any junk food involved.

Dean leans forward. His eyes are full of something Sam can’t quite identify. “Get in,” he says. “I got something I want to show you.”

Squashing the urge to remind Dean of what they’re supposed to be doing, Sam gets in. The car is warm, at least, and when Dean shoves the bag of fries at him he realizes he’s starving. He shoves a handful into his mouth, moaning around the salt and crunch of them. Dean drops the car into reverse and swings it back onto the road.

When Sam figures it out he drops the bag of fries. “Dude! This is the Impala!”

Dean smiles then, looking faintly smug.

“How did you --?”

“The FBI might be fooled by the Rent-A-Wreck back there, but I’m guessing the Leviathans have all our frequent flyer numbers memorized. Bobby picked her up a few weeks back, stashed her at a garage in town and put the keys in a mail drop. Thought I might as well go get her – she hates being left out anyways.” He pats the dash gently.

Makes sense, Sam thinks. There'd been a few LeCarre novels in the stacks, too. “You find a hunt while you were gone? Where are we going?” _Bobby_ , he thinks, but keeps his voice neutral.

Dean swings the car onto the ramp for the southbound interstate, and shakes his head briefly. “No monsters. New Mexico.”

Sam blinks. “What’s in New Mexico, if it’s not a case?”

Dean glances into the rearview mirror and accelerates hard. Once he’s safely settled into the fast lane, he reaches out a hand. “Gimme some of those fries,” he demands, and Sam hands over the remains of the bag. He fishes the last ones out, crams them into his mouth, and chews away contentedly until Sam clears his throat. Then he tosses the bag into the backseat. “Like I said, I got something I want to show you. You gonna trust me on this?”

Sam watches him for a while. He looks sober, and this time it’s actually Dean, he thinks; fries or no fries, Lucifer-as-Dean never looked _hopeful_ , and Sam’s pretty sure that’s what the smile lurking around his brother’s mouth means. It’s almost the same one he remembers from the year Dean stole that tassel thingy from the neighbors down the street and gave it to him, making Christmas happen by brute force alone.

They'd been by themselves that year, too, the first year Sam realized Dad might not come back.

*

Sixteen hours later they’re in Angel Fire, New Mexico – “Angel Fire?” Sam asks, but Dean shrugs away from the question, and the bigger one behind it – and checking into a motel for a couple of hours’ sleep before they… Sam realizes he still doesn’t know the answer.

But it doesn’t seem to matter right at the moment, because a clerk who can’t be more than fifteen, his face blurred with acne, has taken Dean’s credit card and given him the key to a room with a muttered warning to put the Do Not Disturb sign up if they don’t want to face the maids in a few hours. “And it’s the last cabin on the right. Call if you need anything,” he says doubtfully, with a glance at the clock behind him.

Sam nods, snags the key and pushes back out into the parking lot, and watches his breath crystallize in the cold early morning air while Dean hauls a duffel bag out of the car.

“Come on, Sammy.” Dean slams the trunk and walks around to where Sam is standing. He settles a hand into the small of Sam’s back and pushes him gently toward their cabin. Angel Fire, New Mexico, is a few thousand feet higher than Sioux Falls, drier and colder and ringed with mountains, hulking shapes silhouetted dimly against the star-filled sky. there's fresh snow in the parking lot, just enough to crunch under their boots as they walk past the line of small adobe cabins.

They stop in front of the last one and Sam fits the key into the lock. Dean crowds him into the room, dropping the bag and muscling Sam up against the wall, pulling him down for a sloppy kiss. Sam can feel the rough-finished plaster against the skin of his back and presses back into it, biting down on Dean’s lower lip hard enough to surprise a grunt out of his brother.

Dean pulls his mouth away from Sam’s, wipes the bead of blood off his lip and slowly, deliberately, yanks Sam back down. Dean’s mouth tastes copper-bright and sour, and Sam has to stop himself from biting down again, harder this time, hard enough to feel the –

He pulls away then, lets his head smack into the wall behind him and stares down at Dean, breathing hard and listening for the low chuckle he's gotten used to hearing whenever he's a little too close to some kind of edge.

But -“Kinky, dude,” is all Dean says, and Sam doesn't hear any laughter, so maybe they’ve left Lucifer back in Sioux Falls contemplating his own mortality. He glances down at Dean then, and Dean grins and swipes his tongue over the tiny cut on his lip.

There's an odd look on Dean's face, something curious and coolly assessing underneath the familiar flush of arousal, and it takes Sam a minute before he realizes that, whatever Dean thinks Sam’s up to, he wants some of it. Sam lets his hips roll forward, sees his brother’s eyes go wide, and kisses Dean hard and fast before pushing them both off the wall. He might have guessed his brother had a pain kink; he’s certainly fucked his way through everything short of compound fractures.

But Sam doesn’t want to fuck anybody until he’s had a shower and washed his hair and isn’t reminded of Lucifer every time he gets a whiff of his own funk. He glances around the room, taking in reindeer cavorting across the pillows and peeping out from behind cartoon trees on the comforter. He shrugs. They’ve stayed in plenty of worse places, and, hey, at least the room has heat.

“Sam?” Dean says, uncertainly, and Sam leans over, kisses him again and points toward the bathroom.

“Shower first. You smell like Cheetos and Mountain Dew and I smell like the ghost of barbecues past, and seriously? Did you know Bobby kept all that crap from when we were kids?” He’d found a box of their stuff that morning – that morning? The previous morning? Sam yawns hugely. He needs to go to sleep, too, but he needs to tell Dean this first.

“What crap?” Dean toes off his boots and glances up.

“School papers – report cards, couple of notes from teachers, that sort of thing.” The box hadn’t been too badly damaged by the fire but the contents were pretty well waterlogged. Sam had barely been able to read the writing on most of it, but memory had filled in the gaps where the ink had washed away. “Must have been that year he taught you to play baseball, I think my stuff said second grade.”

He’d seen his name, _Sam Winchester_ , in careful capital letters on a yellow spiral notebook, and below that, a matching one covered in hand-drawn cars. Dean’s, he’d thought, and hadn’t opened it, not wanting to pry into ancient secrets. Bobby’d given them the notebooks for Christmas one year, telling Sam there were some things a man couldn’t say, even to his own brother.

Across the room, Dean stands up and strips out of his t-shirt and jeans and, leaving them on the floor, walks back toward Sam, turning him around as he got closer and pointing him toward the bathroom. “Bobby was a good dad. Bought me my first copy of _Playboy_.” He kicks the bathroom door open, flips on the light, and reaches around Sam to unbuckle his belt. “Never had the nerve to tell him I was buying copies of _Playgirl_ , too.”

He slips his thumbs under the waistband of Sam’s boxers and starts to push them down over Sam’s hips. Sam fits his hands over Dean’s to help, shivering as Dean’s blunt fingers slide over his skin. He steps out of his jeans, leaning forward to turn on the water, and then looks back at Dean. “I’m going to miss him, Dean.”

Dean steps into the shower. “Me too, Sam. Me too.”

 

*

The tinny sound of nortena music wakes them up some time later. Sam’s the first to get his head off the pillow – Dean, less annoyed by tubas, perhaps, is still snoring into the hollow of Sam’s shoulder – so he reaches out, slaps it until it shuts off and slides out from underneath Dean. It’s 5pm. He needs to take a leak, find coffee and something resembling food, and maybe then, stuffed full of sugar and caffeine, Dean will tell him why the hell he’s dragged them all the way to Angel Fire, New Mexico. He figures that while it’s possible _not South Dakota for Christmas_ was as far as Dean’s planning had gotten, there must be more or he wouldn’t have set the alarm.

There’s a nest of damp towels on the floor of the bathroom, and Sam kicks them to one side and flips up the toilet seat. They’d stopped once or twice the previous day, but Mountain Dew, Sam has found, takes more than twenty four hours to clear the system, and it’s with a sigh of relief that he lets go of the last of it. Washing his hands afterward, he glances into the mirror.

He looks a little better than he has for the last week or so, even with his hair flattened onto one side of his head and a line of bite marks running up his neck. The circles beneath his eyes are less obvious than they’ve been since Cas took the wall down, and Sam gives his reflection a wolfish grin, listening for whispers of laughter in the corner of the room. And when he rolls his shoulder up to check, there’s no whiff of brimstone clinging to his skin.

Instead he smells like _Dean_ , he realizes, wondering if maybe Lady Macbeth hadn’t missed a trick in her attempts to clean her hands using only soap. Certainly the soap had helped, but nowhere near as much as Dean’s mouth, kissing the pulse in his throat, dragging with sharp stubbled pressure over his chest to bite at the fold of Sam’s belly button and the head of his –

“Hey!” Dean’s voice is loud against the tiles and Sam jerks away from the mirror, startled. “Hey,” Dean says again, more softly this time, dropping his eyes to Sam’s suddenly-flagging erection. He grins at Sam, flapping a hand in its direction. “I’d suggest sticking around and, ah, doing something about that little problem of yours but –“ he taps the crystal of his watch “—but I didn’t drive you down here just to suck your dick, so let’s get rolling.”

Sam rolls his eyes and shoves past Dean. “Fine, see if you get yours sucked anytime soon either,” he mutters.

He grabs for his clothes, but one sniff of his t-shirt tells him he’ll need to steal something from Dean’s bag. Fortunately, Dean had thought about his brother’s newfound obsession with getting away from the smell of smoke as quickly as possible, and had packed extras for both of them. Sam pulls a clean shirt over his head and, remembering the frozen air blowing down from the mountains, grabs one of Dean’s henleys to put on under his flannel shirt. “I don’t care where we’re going as long as there’s coffee,” he announces finally, combing his fingers through his hair.

Dean pulls open the door to the room and then turns back to Sam, his eyes bright. Behind him, across the parking lot, Sam can see the Impala, its roof obscured by snow, and the low square shape of the motel’s office. It’s nearly sunset. “Sammy, there’s _always_ coffee. Haven’t you learned to trust me on that yet?”

Sam has. Sam does, and true to his word, there’s coffee and eggs and waffles in a diner advertising breakfast all day on a hand-lettered sign curling in the fragrant, grease-laden steam, and afterwards, Sam’s half-minded to suggest they go back to the motel, but Dean’s clearly got bigger things in mind.

Which is how he finds himself watching Dean wrestle the car up a narrow mountain road and back it gingerly into a tiny parking lot overlooking what appears to be a ski resort. At least, Sam hopes it’s a ski resort; otherwise, the long line of villagers carving their way through the trees, torches aloft, probably means they’re getting out the holy water at some point tonight.

“Dude, what the fuck?” he asks Dean, somewhat irritably. He’s full, he’s halfway back to sleepy, and for once, he doesn’t smell of anything more noxious than cheap motel shampoo and fake maple syrup. Sam wants a nap, not a visit from Santa.

Visits from Santa never go well in his world.

Dean, who’s gotten out of the car and is rooting around in the back seat, doesn’t answer. Sam hauls himself out of the car and tramps over to the edge of the parking lot to peers down toward the villagers, most of who seem to have gotten to the bottom of the hill. He envies them for a moment – at least they’ll get to go inside, where it’s warm, to perform their blood rituals – before hearing a muttered curse.

Dean is standing outside the car, arms laden with sleeping bags. He motions toward the back of the car. “Help me with these,” he tells Sam, and together they spread the oldest bag onto the car, pulling it up over the window and patting it into place.

He motions Sam up onto the trunk and dives back into the car’s backseat. “Come on, Sammy, get comfy. I’ll get the nog sorted out.”

A moment later, he’s up on the car with Sam, sleeping bag pulled up to their chins and a quart container of eggnog and two Styrofoam cups balanced precariously between Sam’s down-covered knees. Dean fishes a flask out of his jacket and brandishes it at Sam. “Pour the eggnog, would you?”

Somehow, both cups get filled with nog and enough whiskey that they might as well not have bothered with the dairy products. Sam raises his cup to his brother and gives him a quizzical look.

“Not that this isn’t fun, Dean, but –“ He gestures at the mountain in front of them. The ski lift cables are barely visible in the lights from the long run, and in the dark, Sam lets himself admit to the tiniest bit of disappointment. They don’t ski, they’ve never skied, why the fuck Dean’s taken him to a ski resort when all snow has ever meant is colder, wetter, more dangerous hunts he doesn’t –

At which point a series of explosions rocks the air around them and an enormous starburst, white and blue and gold in the limpid dark night, rises nearly even with them, and Sam figures it out. A half a dozen smaller booms gives them flashes of red like fast-fading poppies, and then there’s a series of blasts deep enough to feel in his bones, and a bouquet bursts copper and iridium-bright over their heads.

He turns to Dean, who shakes his head and points Sam back toward the fireworks. Dean’s smiling, he can see that in the light of the next explosion and the next and the next, a smile that gets wider and impossibly sunnier as the fireworks get bigger and louder and finally come crashing to an end in a blaze of scarlet and blue and silver.

“Merry Christmas, Sam,” Dean says finally, when Sam turns back to him, sure there’s not going to be an encore but too comfortable, for the moment, to move.

He gapes at Dean. _Merry Christmas?_ “How the hell did you --?” he starts, but he’s not surprised when Dean just quirks an eyebrow at him and leans over to kiss him until he shuts up.

“There’s this thing called the internet, Sam. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” he says against Sam’s mouth, laughter threading into his words, and Sam drops his eggnog cup over the side of the car’s trunk and takes his brother’s face in his gloved hands, running his fingers up into Dean’s short hair and pulling back enough to meet his eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Dean. Merry Christmas.”

And he thinks he needs to say more, something about Bobby and maybe Cas, something about Dad and _thank you_ and the Impala, but maybe _Merry Christmas_ and the fact that they’re here to say it at all is, finally, everything that needs to be said. So he fits his mouth to Dean’s and kisses him, and far below them, the lights wink out on the ski run, and the villagers head home for the night.

 

  


[](http://pics.livejournal.com/tesserae_/pic/000f01pp/)

  


The Christmas Eve fireworks at Angel Fire Ski Area.

 

~end~  


  
Epilogue, for de_nugis  


They make it back to Sioux Falls in time for New Year’s Eve. Dean drives straight past Mavis’, where the books they’d pulled out of Bobby’s house are still stored in the room Mavis only rents to drunks and men sleeping around on their wives, and pulls into the parking lot of a some corporate chain motel a few miles past Singer Salvage. The room he rents is completely anonymous, plaid bedspreads on the two beds and paintings of the Badlands bolted to the wall. It’s got a coffeemaker, though, and a fridge, and doesn’t look anything like the motels they usually stay at. He just hopes the big rigs out back aren’t harboring anything that needs killing. Dean is all out of kill.

When he gets back to the room from a brief visit to the ice machine, Sam is on the phone making “Mmmm hmmm” noises at someone. Dean busies himself with the bottle of Jack he’d picked up earlier. When Sam says, “Okay, six o’clock then,” and puts the phone down, Dean glances over at him.

“Six o’clock? What’s at six o’clock?”

Sam yawns hugely and waves a hand toward the door. “Dinner. Sheriff Mills. She swore she’d bought a new turkey after we didn’t show up for Christmas—“

“Christmas _what_?” Dean is starting to feel like the publicist for _Chinese Democracy_. “Christmas was last week, Sam. Remember, New Mexico, fireworks – ringing any bells?”

Sam blinks at him. “I was there, Dean,” he says mildly, and leans over to untie his boots. He slides them off, sets them next to his bed, and then rolls his socks down over his bony ankles. Once the socks are off, he flexes his feet in the cool air of the room, then lies back on the ugly spread, closing his eyes.

Dean sets his plastic glass and the bottle of Jack Daniels down on the small coffee table as quietly as he can, and pours himself a shot. Sam, his long limbs sprawled across the bed, chest rising and falling as he takes shallow careful breaths, looks exhausted. His too-long hair is lank around his face and his bones are sharp and clear beneath his skin, and the V-shaped scar on the palm of his hand is bright pink and shiny, as if the flesh itself is fighting back against Sam’s habit of digging at it whenever Lucifer starts laughing over his shoulder. Dean doesn’t blame it, really; he finds the whole thing pretty irritating, too, just wishes Lucifer would back off long enough to let Sam and his left hand heal. Then maybe Dean can quit being besties with his buddy Jack, at least until the world rights itself or the Leviathans pick up their trail again. 

On the nightstand next to Sam's head, the alarm clock tells him it’s barely 2pm. He picks up his glass, sips at the whiskey thoughtfully, then crosses the room and leans over Sam. Sam’s breathing is evening out into sleep, slow and steady, and Dean shuts his own eyes in relief for a moment before touching his brother’s forehead lightly. Sam grumbles and turns into his touch without waking up, and Dean slides Sam’s phone out of his pocket. 

Grabbing the key off the dresser, he steps outside and presses _redial_ on the phone.

“Sheriff Mills,” a familiar voice says, sounding a little thick, and Dean lets his head fall back against the smooth siding of the motel’s wall. _Dammit, Bobby._

“Hi, um. This is Dean Winchester.” What’s he supposed to call her, anyways? Aunt Sheriff? “Sam’s brother,” he adds, just in case.

There’s a pause, then a dry laugh. “I know who you are, Dean. Are you and Sam coming to supper tonight?” There’s a TV blaring behind her, and her voice is loud in Dean’s ear, as if she’s holding the phone too close to her mouth. 

He looks out over the parking lot. It’s starting to snow again, dry hard little flakes that are getting into his eyes. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “Sam’s taking a nap, he hasn’t been sleeping very well.”

There's a pause, and her voice, when she answers, manages to be both brisk and infinitely kind. “Yeah, he sounded tired last week. Don’t expect it’s gotten much better yet.”

 _No, no it hasn’t_ , he wants to say. “He wakes up before six, we’ll call you,” he offers instead, hesitating, and she seems to recognize for the refusal it really is.

“Okay." She pauses, then tries again. "Or just come over, Dean – you boys’d be doing me a favor eating this thing. I only have a small freezer, and it’s pretty much full of Lean Cuisine already.”

Dean lets her voice hang there in the icy air, and then pushes the button to turn the phone off. He doesn’t know Sheriff Mills well enough to know if she’s telling the truth about the meal and her reasons for offering it, but even so, he suspects the Bobby-shaped space between them is way too big to be filled with turkey, whether the stuffing comes from a box or not. 

When he gets back into the room, Sam has shifted himself around so that he’s lying more or less in the intended direction on the bed. Dean toes his boots off, grabs the bedspread from the other bed and, spooning up behind Sam, pulls it over both of them. He’s gonna let Sammy take the lead on this one: if Sam’s brain manages to remember it’s been promised mashed potatoes and gravy, Dean will get out of bed. Otherwise, he’s staying right here, one arm wrapped around his brother’s belly, his hand resting on Sam’s muscled chest so he can feel his heart as it beats. 

_New Year’s Eve_ , he thinks, feeling his own breathing slow to match itself to Sam’s wheezing cadence. Next year, if they’re still kicking, he’s taking them to Vegas. Sheriff Mills, too, if she wants. Satisfied with that plan, he lets his eyes fall closed, and follows Sam into sleep.


End file.
